You awaken in an unfamiliar place, a realm ruled by stone.
All around you, towering walls of rough, irregular masonry rise skyward, piled into grotesque structures, most of them lying in ruins. Moats, buttresses, ramparts, keeps, gates, and portcullises are scattered haphazardly around you. The whole place seems to defy not only every principle of architecture, but at times even the laws of perspective and space itself.
The heavy air filling your lungs is changing you. It leaves them again in a hollow, cavernous rasp. Already, the tips of your fingers are hardening and beginning to crumble; you could swear you can feel your bones grinding within your joints. Blurred patches creep into the corners of your vision, a sign that the surface of your eyes has begun to calcify. Before it is too late, you focus your remaining strength and will on a single thought.
The exit.
Find the exit.
***
CHÂTEAU MISÈRE is a minimalist solo gamebook in A5 format, inspired by classic gamebooks. The player's goal is to escape a cursed castle before becoming trapped within it forever.
The rules fit on just three pages, and all you need to play is the booklet and two six-sided dice. Players navigate a labyrinth of interconnected scenes that together form the Castle, searching for a way out. Games are short, challenging, resources are scarce, and survival is far from guaranteed.
All artwork in CHÂTEAU MISÈRE consists of original hand-made collages created from historical photographs originally published in Henri-Paul Eydoux's Châteaux Fantastiques series.
More from Jean-Baptiste Lévêque and Zalhietzli HERE and HERE